Receding glaciers alter Alpine vistas

To fight the melt, researchers and others cover ice with plastic, foil

GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press

Published
5:30 am CDT, Monday, July 18, 2005

EISGRAT, AUSTRIA - It gets so cold up at this Alpine skiing station that the locals call it Eisgrat — "Icy Spine." But Eisgrat's spine is melting.

A sign on a sheer cliff wall nearby points to a mountain hut. It should have been at visitors' eye level but is more than 60 feet above their heads. That's how much of the glacier has shrunk since the sign went up 35 years ago.

"It's not a good feeling," says Alois Ranalter, a maintenance worker who spends his summers focused on stopping the melt. "The glacier is our life."

Most of Austria's 925 glaciers have been receding under decades of global warming, prompting researchers and ski-lift operators to seek novel solutions. Here, in the Tyrol region of western Austria, they're fighting the melt by covering the weak spots with blankets of white plastic or foil that keep the cold in and the heat out.

The covers have transformed Eisgrat's pristine vista, which has drawn generations of skiers and hikers. Summer skiers now sweep by a patch of white polyethylene as big as a football field against the majestic backdrop.

The oversize doormats aren't new in Austria or elsewhere. Patches around ski-lift pylons are particularly sensitive because the ice thaws and shifts each year, forcing workers to re-anchor the supports regularly.

But record temperatures and lack of snow and rain in the summer of 2003 accelerated the melting, exposing patches of rock, earth and tree trunks in the middle of ski slopes.

This year, nearly 40 acres are under wraps in Tyrol — about 5 percent of the region's ski areas. Similar work is being done in neighboring Switzerland, where studies show that glaciers there have lost almost a fifth of their total area between 1985 and 2000, at a rate seven times faster than during the entire 123 years up to 1973.

While she agrees that climate change caused by pollution must be reduced, Andrea Fischer, an Innsbruck University researcher involved in the project, says she isn't too bothered by the glaciers' retreat.

"The climate has changed in the past, and it will change in the future," she says. "The problem with most people is that they don't want anything to change — not their jobs, not their relationships and definitely not the weather."